could answer that question. that is right. i ll go out on a limb and say yes, it is. is attempts extortion and bribery a crime? i don t know, sir. congressman, so explain what you meant by this specific line of questioning? well, as i said at the hearing, based on the evidence that i ve seen, the president did one of two things. either he committed extortion and bribery of a foreign official or he committed attempted extortion and bribery of a foreign official. and if that is the case, if the republicans defense is that the aid still went through, there were never investigations that happened, from the transcript and from all of the affirming witness testimony we have, the president was actually trying to get the ukraine president to investigate the bidens which would benefit president trump politically and he was threatening to withhold military aid. so that is an attempted extortion and bribery and that is still a crime. even if you re not successful,
say this. this is very obviously very important because there is an effort apparently to, by the president s allies, to throw sondland under the bus, throw mulvaney, throw anybody under the bus in an effort to protect the president. but what this call indicates as other testimony has likewise indicated, is that the instructions are coming from the president on down. reporter: now i also asked adam schiff whether or not he believes that gordon sondland himself told the truth in his testimony. and he said he couldn t recall exactly what told him that ukrainian aid was likely tied to the public declaration of investigations and it would not be released until the ukrainians made that very clear that they were announcing these investigations into the bidens but adam schiff would not say whether or not he believed gordon sondland told the truth. sondland will testify next week and said he will let the american public judge this and republicans, wolf, for their part, believe they were eff
the ukraine aide because the chairman said it was only released averagetation in the executive branch and on capitol hill about what was going on with the aid. the other thing that was interesting and i was surprised with both sides is that republicans seemed to want to make the case, wolf, that because president trump had supposedly done more than president obama for ukraine, providing military aid instead of other forms of aide, that mitigated the entire situation in terms of with holding the aid that congress had approved. i was surprised they did this because number one, president obama made a policy decision, not to give military aid. it had nothing to do with trying to exact a favor, though, out of ukraine and he thought that wasn t the way to go. he wanted to sanction russia not put more weapons into the ukrainian theater but the democrats didn t make that argument. president trump doesn t want to give missiles and other forms of aid and sanctions. maybe because it is all of
the straws republicans were grabbing, that was the shortest and weakest. it doesn t make a whole lot of sense. it was pretty obvious what republicans are trying to do is make it the to quote mick mulvaney, the so-what defense. it is what the president s prerogative is and what the president wanted to do and at the end of the day if he didn t get this quid pro quo or this extortion, then why would it be impeachable? so that is obviously what the republicans are trying to make the case for to the very few people out there who might be undecided, particularly senate republicans. it was very interesting to see how the democrats, i just sort of big picture, we knew that adam schiff made this process quite different than the hearings that we are used to seeing. and from the democratic point of view, it worked. you were able to take a breath
the top diplomat in ukraine revealed a phone conversation directly tieing president trump to the push for ukraine to open political investigations that would help the president presumably politically. we re back with our correspondents and our analysts. and david, the republicans kept insisting, this aid, nearly $400 million in security assistance for ukraine, was ultimately released so what is the big deal. hoer is how the the chairman adam schiff replied to that. some have argued in the president s defense that the aid was ultimately released and that is true but only after the congress began investigations and after the president learned of a whistle-blower complaint and after members of congress began asking uncomfortable questions about quid pro quos. david, you re analysis? i m surprised that republica republicans leaned to heavily on